“‘The world is safer,’ Mr. Obama said as he appeared at a White House ceremony bestowing the Medal of Honor to two soldiers killed in the Korean War. ‘It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden.'”

“The world had already moved beyond bin Laden and al Qaeda. Operationally al Qaeda’s command and control had been crippled and their top leaders had either been arrested or killed.”

If anything, the organization he built is way bigger now than it was after 9/11. As the Hindu pointed out:

“The stark truth is this: a decade after 9/11, the jihadist movement is more powerful than at any time in the past. The small group bin Laden built in Afghanistan has flowered.

Bin Laden himself, the scholar C. Christine Fair has noted, has emerged as a ‘kind of Che Guevara of the jihadist movement’: an icon important not for the operational role he played, but an inspirational figure who could figure the imaginations of young recruits. Put another way, bin Laden’s death — or, to the faithful, martyrdom — might prove to be his last service for his macabre cause.

Back in 2001, at the perceived peak of its power, the al-Qaeda had a core of just under 200 cadre — 120-odd grouped together in a crack unit, and a small number of foot-soldiers handling logistical work and training. Perhaps a thousand men had graduated from the training camps it ran in Afghanistan, but they were riven by ideological disputation and personal feuds.

For years before them, bin Laden had sought to become the principal leader of the jihadist movement, by developing loose alliances with ideologically affiliated organisations — alliances that were built around personal relationships, and cemented with cash from his coffers.”